It is well known that an increasing number of nations throughout the world possess, or are attempting to develop, chemical-biological (CB) agents and delivery systems capable of striking military and civilian targets with little or no warning. Presently, due primarily to factors of cost and bulk, no suitable protective hood mask exists which is satisfactorily designed for widespread, but short duration, use only. Heretofore, hood masks have been too expensive to be truly disposable (i.e., one-use only) or available for widespread use or too large and heavy to enable convenient personal stowage and transport by individuals.
To minimize the effects of CB attacks, a need exists for a reliable, low cost, small-sized, light-weight, foldable and disposable protective hood mask for use by military and civilian populations in emergency situations in contaminated environments. Such a hood mask need only provide the user with protection for a short time period (e.g. two hours); within that period, the user will locate a permanent mission mask and transition into it, process into a collective protective shelter or move to an uncontaminated location. A need for a hood mask exists, which has a small stowage volume to be able to fit into a G-suit and individual protective equipment (IPE) pockets. Needs for such a hood mask include temporary use by military personnel to enable them to get to a duty station during a CB attack or when they are in transit due to temporary duty or reassignment; civilians to escape exposure to toxic chemical spills; civil reserve air fleet (CRAF) aircraft crews deploying to high threat areas; covert military operations; military reservists; military dependents; military medical operating room personnel and military medical corp in hospital and field sites; and medical patients in some circumstances. Such masks are also needed as an emergency mask in CB collective protective shelters in the event shelter filtration system fails or emergency evacuation of the shelter is required when contamination is present.
Despite the above-noted critical needs, no satisfactory low-cost, small, light-weight, foldable and disposable hood mask has heretofore been provided.
A significant bar to achieving a hood mask assembly with the above features has been the need for a suitable respiratory filter which is attached to the hood material. Prior art hood mask designs include filters housed in large, bulky, hard and rigid canisters which are incapable of being folded and result in an overall bulky hood mask requiring a large stowage volume. Examples of such prior art designs are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,963,874 and 4,294,599, the disclosures of both of which are incorporated by reference herein.